Civic Impact

This weekend, national nonprofit Meal Exchange is holding its annual three-day food summit at the U of T 's Hart House, where leaders will reveal the result of a year-long project to draft a national student food charter.

With a mission to educate and mobilize students around issues of food security, Meal Exchange is hoping students will take the charter back to their campuses in order to launch campus-specific initiatives, says education manager Gregory Sam. The charter isn't prescriptive about what exactly each Meal Exchange chapter should be doing. Instead, it outlines the principles that underlay the campus food movement more generally, including a commitment to social justice, collaboration, education and health.

The idea for a charter first emerged at last year's summit, which was also fittingly the first year of the food summit's relaunch. Though the Meal Exchange has been holding a summit for eight years now (the organization itself was founded 13 years ago), the summit was expanded significantly in 2011. 

"We broadened the scope and included students from all across the country who are interested in food issues, specifically our meal exchange chapter members," says Sam. "The old [summit] was run with smaller groups and was focused on meal exchange programming…. But at last year's summit, we got a wide variety of students together to discuss what food should like on their campus. The hope was to take the ideas generated from that to have a document that could be taken back to their campus with them. But what we discovered was that three days isn't a long enough time to create such a massive document that could be used in a widespread way."

That's why for the past year, Meal Exchange has been consulting with campus stakeholders across the country, including faculty and administration as well as students, to generate the document that will be revealed at this weekend's summit.

In addition to the presentation of the charter, the summit will also include social activities and networking, a wide variety of food-focused speakers, panel events and interactive tours of Toronto food organizations.

"It's a unique experience in the sense that it is three consecutive days and it is exclusive to university students and college students." says Sam "It generates a family-like atmosphere."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Gregory Sam, Education Manager, Meal Exchange

On the last Friday of July, 10 pairs of eager entrepreneurs who had gathered at Toronto's MaRS Discovery Centre were given just 60 seconds and three PowerPoint slides to sell their business idea to panel of expert judges.

In that short window of opportunity, the teams needed to both convince the judges that their business model was feasible and to demonstrate how they planned to use the $1,000 of prize money up for grabs. This accelerated pitch session was especially fitting since the participants were not only the graduates of one of MaRS's most condensed business incubator programs (just one week long). They were also the centre's youngest entrepreneurs to date.

The pitch session was the culmination of  MaRS's inaugural Future Leaders Series which offered 20 students between the ages of 13 and 15 the chance to experience the life of a "MaRs-ian entrepreneur."

"We had 20 amazing kids come in from across the city and we put them through essentially a boot camp: a compressed version of exactly what we do with our adult entrepreneurs," says Joseph Wilson, educational lead with MaRS Discovery District and the main curriculum planner for the week-long summer program.

The participants were provided with a combination of expert mentoring and hands-on assignments. The course worked to replicate, as much as possible, the many steps entrepreneurs have to take to see their idea reach fruition. On day one, says Wilson, the kids were talking ideas with MaRS entrepreneurs. By day two, they had their own business cards and by the end of day four, they had done customer interviews, business model brainstorming and blogged and tweeted about what they were developing.  And that's how, by week's end, they found themselves in front of a panel of MaRS experts ready to pitch their original idea in just one minute.

At the pitch session, which Wilson describes as much a celebration of the students' work as a contest, the ideas included microchip tagged house keys— If you lose them you can just download an app to tell you where they are—and a water filtration system for the developing world, which takes water out of the air instead of ground water. The winner was garden solutions.

"They had this idea to sell prepackaged herb boxes so people could grow herbs and just add water," says Wilson. "They really impressed the judges with their account of how they were going to use the prize money."

Just because the students won for their creative idea doesn't mean MaRS expects them to use the money to become teenaged CEOs.

"We made it very clear that although we were interested in their business idea and they won for their business idea, really we're investing in them as entrepreneurs and not necessarily in their idea. These kids are 14, right? If they don't continue with this specific business idea that's okay. We definitely want them to prioritize school and time with family. They can invest that money in themselves in any they wish."

What's important, says Wilson, is not the money but rather the experience the students gained and the networks that all the students are coming away with.

"Many of them are still trading emails with their mentors. It gives them an anchor in the entrepreneurship community here in Toronto," says Wilson. "They might have another 10 or 12 ideas in the next 10 years. When they do find that million dollar idea, we want them to come to MaRS."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Joseph Wilson, Educational Lead, MaRS Disovery District 

This month, the School for Social Entrepreneurs Ontario (SSE-O) is choosing 20 students who will join them for their very first nine-month fellowship program.

The 20 students will form the inaugural cohort for a new kind of Ontario school, one that favours "action learning" over classroom learning and whose application process favours "drive and values" over educational or career background. Once selected, the 20 SSE-O fellows will participate in a nine-month course that will help them build the resources and connections they need to get their social ventures off the ground. 

Classes will be organized around particular themes, ranging from marketing to business planning to communications, and will be taught by experienced social entrepreneurs. Unlike traditional schools, class will only held once a week. The rest of the time, students will be engaging in something called "action learning," the crux of the SSE program. 

"Action learning is about students taking real-world action, reflecting on their actions, and refining the course of action that they're going to take," says SSE-O director Marjorie Brans. "We're really pushing that they go out there and do something."

Located in the Regent Park neighbourhood, at 540 Dundas Street East, SSE-O celebrated its launch in late June, and will begin its first term this September. While the SSE is new to Canada, the model has a proven track-record around the world; the first SSE school was launched more than a 15 years ago in London, England. The model has since been replicated in SSE schoold in eight cities across the UK and four years ago was expanded to Melbourne and Sydney in Australia. 

The Ontario location is the result of a collaboration between the MaRS Discovery District, Regent Park's Centre for Community Learning and Development, ACCESS Community Capital and led by the Housing Services Corp. The program is funded by a three-year $500,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

Brans says that while the educational model may be transportable, the social ventures SSE-O students will pursue will be local and community-based. 

"By the very nature of the solution seeker, this will reflect Ontario's reality. So, for example, we see there's a lot of talk about shootings and gang violence. We have a number of people who have applied to the school come from communities that have experienced gang violence and have ideas of how they want to address that."

"We know the model in general works. Here is Canada, the task will be to take what had already proven a robust model and apply it to a Canadian context.... Canada has a long history of social entrepreneurship. That's not new. I think what SSE-O adds to the mix, it lowers the barrier to entry for people who want to do this.... What SSE does is try to make [social entrepreneurship] an easier process for people who may not have all the connections and the societal stamp that says, 'Yes, this person is a legitimate solution-seeker and has all the right credentials,' and so we're going to support this person."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Marjorie Brans, Director, SSE-O

After the installation of a real-time energy-use moniter, the average home sees a decrease of between five and 20 per cent in energy consumption. One of the simplest methods to reduce everyday energy usage, it turns out, is simply becoming aware in the moment of how much we're actually using.

It's this lesson that underlies Toronto Hydro's newest energy conservation program, PeakSaver Plus. PeakSaver Plus, so-called because it's being rolled out as a complement to Toronto Hydro's existing Peaksaver program, includes the free installation of an in-home energy display that moniters A/C usage. 

Toronto Hydro spokesperson Tanya Bruckmueller Wilson says PeakSaver Plus not only gives customers up-to-the-minute usage readings, it "indicates to the customers whether it's on-peak, mid-, or off-peak, and gives them the approximate cost."

"It's almost like a diet journal. They say people lose more weight when they actually write down what they're eating," says Bruckmueller Wilson. "This tool is like the energy diet tool.... It prompts the customer to take an active role in conservation."

Toronto Hydro will install the Peaksaver Plus energy moniter in the homes of interested customers already partipating in the Peaksaver program. The original Peaksaver program is an ongoing initiative that allows Toronto Hydro to slow down the cycle of specific appliances during peak energy situations.

While the technology is still making its way into Toronto homes, Bruckmueller Wilson is hopeful that it will not only save Torontonians money, but will reduce strain on the grid.

"We've had great success with our conservation programs in the past. We've got over 60, 000 customers already signed up for Peaksaver and we're starting to see the numbers increase for those customers now signing up for Peaksaver Plus which is a great sign."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source Tanya Bruckmueller Wilson, Spokesperson, Toronto Hydro

The Pearson Eco-Business Zone is not only home to Canada's busiest airport, it's also the country's largest employment area, hosting some 12,500 businesses and more than 355,000 employees.

But most Ontarians would be hard-pressed to identify the Pearson Eco-Business Zone's borders. That's because it didn't exist until three and a half years ago. At least not in any formal way.

The borders of the zone, which compromises 12,000 hectares of industrial and commercial land around and including Pearson airport, were drawn in 2009 when a group of business leaders in the area joined forces to launch Partners in Project Green (PPG). PPG promotes sustainable business practices in the Pearson airport area with the goal of creating an internationally-recognized eco-business zone in Southern Ontario. 

The organization's newest project is a business-to-business waste exchange program.

Chris Rickett, senior project manager at Partners in Project Green (PPG), says that right from the start of PPG, waste management issues were "continuously identified [as a major priority] by the business community in the area." That’s why PPG recently partnered up with the Quebec-based Centre de Transfert Technologique en Écologie Industrielle (CTTEI), an organization dedicated to by-product exchange. 

"CTTEI developed a web-based software that basically allows us put a company's inputs and their outputs into the system and as we build that database, it will begin to identify potential waste synergy opportunities," says Rickett. "Ultimately if it looks like something that makes sense from a material standpoint, but also from an economic standpoint, we basically hand it over to the companies to figure out what that business relationship will look like."

The project is still in its nascent stages—the invitation letters to business were sent out just a few weeks ago—but Rickett and his team have targeted about 400 companies in the area that would be right for the program's first wave.

While this is a new program, Rickett says, these kind of waste-exchanges are already happening.

"We work with a lot of furniture manufacturers and a byproduct that a number of them have is fabric," he says, "but they didn't individually have enough to entice a hauler to take it off at no cost. We ended up connecting four furniture manufacturers, who were actually all competitors, but when they put their resources together they had enough to send it off. Haulers are now picking it up and it's being used for things like the inside of futon mattresses.... Before, all of that would have gone to landfill.”

The CTTEI computer system allows PPG to continue to foster these kinds of waste-exchange programs in more systematic way and at a significantly larger scale. The hope is that the data collected will not only help PPG identify the ways in which current business can begin to reduce waste, but also help them to inform future policy.

"There’s no real data on industrial or commercial waste in the province," says Rickett. "We don't know where it's going or how much there is because it's all basically handled by private haulers. But from the research we've done, we figure about 80 per cent of the waste in the airport area is going to landfill.... So we really see this as a tool to get a handle on what those waste flows are in the airport area so we can better inform potential future policy decisions and regulatory decisions."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Chris Rickett, Senior Project Manager, Partners in Project Green

A group of young Toronto HIV education mentors have released a series of short films to inspire other youth to facilitate HIV awareness and sexual health workshops in their own communities.

The videos were created and released by the participants of Empower Youth, a Toronto-based youth-led HIV capacity project. The films are the result of a collaboration between Empower Youth and four community artists: Hisayo Horie, Mahlikah Aweri, Dainty Smith and Rosa Mindreau. They provide frank but playful suggestions on how to use an anti-oppression framework in conjunction with artistic expression to foster HIV and sexual health education.

The first film, Performing OUT Sex Positivity With Drag and Burlesque, examines how drag and burlesque can be mobilized to start conversations about sex positivity and sexual health. The second, Using Spoken Word in HIV Prevention Workshops: Poetry as Expression, focuses on the liberative power of spoken word expression. And the third, What's Cookin'?: How to Facilitate HIV, Sexual Health or Harm Reduction Workshops for Youth, shows how communal cooking can be used as a launching pad for starting the sometimes difficult conversations that emerge around sexual health and harm reduction. 

In addition to the three educational films, Empower Youth also released two "Behind the Scenes" videos, which provide insight into the impetus behind the videos and the collaborative process that went into their creation.

The videos were released on Vimeo and on Empower Youth's website in early July and each has since been viewed more than 100 times.

Established in 2011, Empower Youth is the result of a collaboration betweent the Central Toronto Community Health Centres, CATIE, and Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP).

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Empower Youth

How does one secure startup capital? It's question every burgeoning entrepreneur grapples with.

For some, the answer might be relatively straightforward: a solid résumé, relevant experience and sufficient collateral is usually enough to secure even a major bank loan.

But for others, the question can be an especially tough one. For low-income individuals without a credit history or consistent employment, going to a bank or private investor for a startup loan is often a nonstarter.

In an effort to make startup capital available to "high risk" entrepreneurs, the Ontario's Women's Directorate (OWD) recently launched a Microlending for Women in Ontario Grant Program. The program, spearheaded by Ontario's Minister of Education and Women's Issues Laurel Broten (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), will support projects that employ microfinancing, the practice of providing small loans to individuals who cannot secure funds from more traditional forces. The aim is to help low-income women move towards financial independence.

"The idea came following some consultations that looked at programs that could empower women to use their skills to achieve their potential to be able to provide for their families, to be able to function in the economy and to provide financial security for themselves," says Graham Rivers, press secretary at Broten's office. "We saw a big gap, and we're hoping mircolending might be a way to fix it."

Because mircolending is still in its nascent stages, the grant is will be awarded not to individual entrepreneurs, but instead to organizations already pursuing, or interested in pursuing, mircofinancing strategies.

"We're still very much at the beginning," says Rivers, "which is why we've been collaborating and consulting with those nonprofits and non-governmental organizations who are connected to some of the people who we'd want to access this program."

"Microlending is well-established around the world, but in Ontario it's not. So part of our goal with this project is to help establish microlending and even draw some evaluation from what happens here to decide whether or not this is the sort of thing we should be pursuing in the future."

Applicants can apply through the Ontario Grants website. The deadline to apply is Friday, July 27. 

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Graham Rivers, Press Secretary for MPP Laurel Broten

For the fifth year in a row, the Waterfront Regeneration Trust (WRT) is leading a group of cycle tourists on eight-day ride across the entire 720-kilometre Waterfront Trail route.

Participants of the Great Waterfront Trail Adventure (GWTA), which officially kicked off this past Saturday, began at the trail's most western point, Niagra-on-the-Lake, and will be making their way to the Quebec border at its most eastern.

GWTA tour manager Marlaine Koehler says the impetus behind the trail adventure is twofold—it's as much to showcase the trail as it is the communities alongside it. While the trail was officially completed 20 years ago, it was not until 2007 that a continuously signed route was in place from Niagara to the Quebec border. After the completion of the signage, the Waterfront Trust, the nonprofit which moniters and manages the trail, started looking for ways to promote the route and the communities who had helped build it. 

"In 2007 we have this signed route. We wanted to get people back on the route and start thinking about what kind of event would do it," says Koehler. "What kind of event will offer a trail-wide perspective? And that's how we came up with the Great Waterfront Trail Adventure. It had to be an adventure so that it could include more than just cycling; so there's kayaking, there's heritage tourism, there's music and there's wineries. But we needed to cycle because we wanted to start from one end and show people that using the existing signage that you could actually use the trail."

In addition to coordinating the ride, the WRT also organizes stops and events in more than 40 Ontario communities along the way, eight of which double as overnight camp sites for of the hardworking cyclists.

"Each community wants to be an overnight," says Koehler, "so every year we change the overnight to reflect the communities that want to have us."

And, she adds, one of this year's most anticipated overnights was held on Sunday at Toronto's Fort York.

"Our theme this year is 1812 so we were all very excited about Fort York. They've been amazing hosts. They made sure there were re-enactors there, a cannon firing and heritage tours of the facility."


Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Marlaine Koehler, GWTA Tour Manager, Waterfront Regeneration Trust

It's a Toronto foodie's paradise as two of the city's most popular purveyors of street food have joined forces.

Starting Friday, July 20, and continuing on the third Friday of every month, Market 707 and Food Truck Eats are teaming up to host Street Food Fridays.

Market 707, a project of Scadding Court Community Centre, uses colourful shipping containers re-puposed as miniature shops and food booths to transform a few blocks Dundas Street West, just east of Bathurst Street, into a vibrant food market.  Since its launch more than a year ago, the market has become a favourite of Toronto foodies who like its variety of cheap and, by all accounts, delicious food.

In June, Market 707 tried an experimental team-up with Food Truck Eats, inviting the project to join them on Saturday afternoon. Food Truck Eats, a intatiative started by Toronto food and wine writer Suresh Doss,  regularly holds gourmet food truck events throughout the city.

"We had heard about some of the [Food Truck Eats] events and we thought that maybe coming together on a special occasion would be maybe a fun idea," says Market 707 coordinator Jackie Hall. "It started with just a one-off in June on a Saturday afternoon to see how it would go."

"Some of the concern was either that the food trucks would take away what would be regular sales for our container vendors and vice versa and not everyone would benefit," says Hall. "But it seems that street food events are popular enough in the city that two can come together and it can still be fruitful enough for everyone involved."

Hall noticed that the combined event brought both initiatives a host of new customers.

"A lot of foodies who follow the food trucks around had never been to our market, and a lot of our regulars had never been to the food trucks. And so it was two crowds that were loyal to one or the other, but has never really experienced both. It was really well received and now we've decided to do it once a month and see how that goes."

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Jackie Hall, Coordinator, Market 707

Thanks to a $2.5-million grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), a group of Canadian researchers will dedicate the next seven years to studying income inequality and social polarization in the country's major cities.

The principal investigator of the project, University of Toronto professor David Hulchanski, garnered national media in 2007 after publishing a report which used 30 years of census tract data to build a detailed picture of neighbourhood change in Toronto. That report, The Three Cities Within Toronto: Income Polarization Among Toronto Neighbourhoods, 1970-2000, revealed an increasingly stark divide between Toronto's wealthiest and most impoverished neighbourhoods.

The new project, called the Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, builds on the work done by Hulchanski and others on income polarization in Canada's cities. In addition to using census data to trace patterns in and among the six Canadian cities chosen for investigation—Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax—the project will also investigate the causes and consquences of the patterns identified. 

"We will work with community partners to carry out case studies in neighbourhoods in the six cities to understand how these trends affect residents' everyday lives," Hulchanski stated in a press release. "This combination of large-scale analysis and local, participatory studies has not been done before on a national scale."

To mark the launch, the University of Toronto last Wednesday brought together researchers from Vancouver, Montreal, Chicago and the Netherlands for a forum on urban inequality. In his opening remarks, Hulchanski spoke to the importance of cross-city comparisons and his hope that the project, rather than just documenting change, will start a movement towards a more equitable and just urban society.

"We all care about cities," he said. "We all care about justice."

For the next seven years, he and his team will be dedicated to thinking through how the fomer can come to reflect the latter.

Source: University of Toronto & University of Toronto Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership Public Forum
Writer: Katia Snukal 

"Amazing things can happen when we work together."

That's the tagline of national charity Tides Canada's latest—and unusual—promotional campaign, called "Strange Bedfellows."

It's not the message behind the campaign—that unexpected partnerships often yield innovative solutions—that makes the campaign stand out, but rather the video Tides released to spread it.

The video gives us a literal representation of the results of unexpected couplings: an environmentalist and a businesswoman part ways after spending (what appears to be) their first night together. Before going their separate ways, both parties sheepishly text back and forth about the fun night, agreeing to see each other again soon before finally thanking Tides Canada for bringing them together. The tag: "Tide Canada. We bring together strange bedfellows. Uncommon solutions for the common good."

"The idea behind the campaign is that there's power in putting groups together that don't often have the opportunity to engage with one another," says Sarah Goodman, Tide Canada's vice president of business development and services, "that successful partnerships are often built between people from different points of view or different walks of life."

Though launched just last week, the cheeky campaign seems to have paid off.

"We seeded the campaign through social media," says Goodman. "It has been a great opportunity for us to reach beyond our traditional networks... it's really gotten a lot of traction."

The campaign also includes a new microsite and the release of the organization's annual report. It comes in the wake of criticism from the Harper government, which has singled out Tides for accepting foreign funding and for its supposed support of organizations opposing the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline between Edmonton and Kitimat, B.C.

Though the Strange Bedfellows campaign doesn't explicitly reference the controversy, Tides wanted to remind Canadians of its core values. 

From its Toronto offices, Tides has sponsored many projects in the GTA including Artreach Toronto, the Centre for City Ecology, Jane's Walk, Not Far From the Tree and East Toronto Storefront.

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Sarah Goodman, Vice President, Business Development & Services, Tides Canada 

For more than 30 years, the Toronto Community Foundation (TCF) has been highlighting Toronto's social and economic challenges, and supporting the organizations and people working to address them. 

They also throw a hell of a party. 

Last Wednesday morning, more than 350 people converged at CBC's Glenn Gould Studio to celebrate the TFC's annual Vital Toronto Celebration. Hosted by Matt Galloway of CBC's Metro Morning, the event interwove speeches, award presentations, a drumming performance by Lawrence Heights Middle School students and a conversation with Shawn Micallef, journalist, author and former Yonge Street editor, on Toronto: The Loveable City. 

The celebration was in honour of the 40 individuals and organizations awarded money in the past year from TCF's Vital Fund. While the grant recipients run the gamut from a theatre collective to Hospice Toronto, they are all, as TFC president and CEO Rahul Bhardwaj, says, "committed to improving Toronto's vital signs."
 
Every year the foundation documents Toronto's successes and challenges, producing its Toronto Vital Signs Report, which guides TCF's investment strategy for the coming year.  Over the 2011/2012 period, TCF awarded 40 Vital Toronto grants totalling more than $600,000.

Bhardwaj says the event was about more than plaque distribution and pats-on-the-back.

"[These events] are an opportunity to bring [city-builders] together and celebrate them individually as organizations and also, maybe more importantly," he says, "we get them all together so they all get charged on the collective story of transformation that all their good work is doing."

Full list of grantees here. 

Writer: Katia Snukal
Source: Rahul Bhardwaj, President & CEO, Toronto Community Foundation